Metal Anarchy

In a new interview with Loudwire, one of the Nameless Ghouls discussed the Ghost vs. Ghost B.C. controversey. It was originally believed that the B.C. was added in North America, due to a lawsuit, but it turns out that it was more of a precautionary thing, and is no longer required.

Here’s what the Nameless Ghoul had to say:

“The thing was there was never a lawsuit. It was basically, I have to just explain myself after I hang one institution out to dry here and that was not our real label, but the bigger umbrella version of our label. Unfortunately in the legal world in general, and it’s not an anti-American thing, but especially in America where people are so conscious about not being sued, obviously all corporations are extremely conscious about not getting sued. So the big major label, specifically, had a policy that said that every artist they sign must own their own name. Obviously we don’t have exclusive rights to our band name because it’s a word so commonly used. There are so many brands that have the word “ghost” that I think it’s almost un-ownable, in a way, unless it’s more specific. So it was basically a demand from the label that we added something.”

He later added:

“What we found least irritating was that if it was something short for something else. We added the B.C. ‘Because of Copyright’ or, obviously, ‘Before Christ.’ We wanted people to still focus on Ghost. Unfortunately that leaked over into the promotional side too just because they tagged everything ‘Ghost B.C.’ everyone started calling it that. While we told every promoter and every journalist that we spoke to, ‘Don’t write Ghost B.C. because that’s not our name.’ It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to go down to McDonalds LLC or McDonalds, Inc. and buy a burger.’

So this time around, when we had a little bit of a flip within the company, we took the opportunity to raise the question and make it happen so that we don’t have to write it out on the record. There’s something extremely unromantic that’s called metadata and within the metadata in all the regions that we need to, it’s still B.C. It’s there in the fine print, but for you and I and everybody else, we don’t have to say that. So it’s Ghost now, which I’m extremely happy about.”

Ghost’s new album, Meliora, will be available on August 21.